


defend your every breath

by down2thebone (aisu10)



Category: Coco (2017)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Life is precious, and héctor misses it, and theres some heart/breath/skeleton stuff lol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 18:08:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13552770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aisu10/pseuds/down2thebone
Summary: héctor muses on life and death while miguel sleeps.





	defend your every breath

**Author's Note:**

> just a short drabble! it takes place within the movie between (spoilers) chicharrón's death and the poco loco performance, long before héctor's true identity is revealed. hope you like it!
> 
> follow my [twitter](https://twitter.com/down2thebone_/) for more coco content!!

“the trains can be a little slow,” héctor warns miguel as they board one on their way from the shantytown to the plaza, “but don’t worry, we’ll make it in time.”   
  
miguel seems to take this to heart, because as soon as they sit down he tips sideways and immediately dozes off against héctor’s shoulder.   
  
after a frozen moment of shock, héctor cautiously slips his arm around the boy and lays him gently on his lap instead, so that the sharp edge of his scapula doesn’t dig into his cheek and ruin his  _ expertly _ -applied makeup. obviously a deep sleeper, the kid doesn’t stir, so héctor takes the opportunity to stroke his fingers fondly through his hair. though they’ve only just met, héctor feels a strange kinship with the boy, and not just because he’s the first person to ever offer to put his picture up for him. no, the reason he likes him so much, he realizes as he watches him lying there clutching chicharrón’s guitar even while unconscious, is that he reminds héctor of himself when he was young. how he wishes he could go back to those careless days, when music was what brought him to his family, not tore him apart from them. like miguel does now, he had his whole life ahead of him. that héctor misses even more than being young — being  _ alive. _ he watches miguel’s chest rise and fall and he misses  _ breathing _ — misses when air actually filled his lungs instead of just whistling through his bones each time his ribcage flexes in a nostalgic echo of its former purpose. he misses the constant embrace of heat and softness that having flesh on your bones provides. he even misses being able to feel  _ pain _ — emotional pain is so much more poignant when there’s nothing physical to balance it out.   
  
héctor tries not to think about how close miguel is to losing all this. beneath the sleeve of the hoodie that has slid partway down miguel’s shoulder, he can see that the boy’s arm is now fully transparent, and he can already spy the shadows of his ribs shifting underneath his skin. though being able to see more of the boy’s bones would actually improve his disguise in the land of the dead, héctor tugs the sleeve back up to cover him anyway, not wanting to look at this sad reminder of how little time he has left before the sunrise snuffs out his life. it frightens héctor to think that if their mission is a failure, miguel might lose that most precious gift — but it also makes him all the more determined to protect it.    
  
he lets his hand rest on the side of miguel’s painted neck, watching his pulse, like the pulse that once ran in héctor and that of every other creature still living, bump against his bony fingertips in an unwitting countdown to its own end. héctor sighs wistfully. miguel will only know how much the heart beating inside him is worth is once it’s stopped.


End file.
